I grab my key and depart room 103, where stale air stinks of something I’d long forgotten to notice. I'd been inside all night. Armed with a belly of continental waffle and not so shabby coffee, I set my compass for softness.

Outside the air feels fresh and cool, yet somehow also putrid, untrustable. This Central Valley farm town's laced with Monsanto god-knows-what. Cancer comes to mind, and sadness. They won’t kill me in one day.

I walk out of the town, past the street lights and strip malls, the trucks spitting diesel and the tightly trimmed suburban yards. Neighborhoods bring me closer — they are quiet, there is birdsong, and relief from all of the trucks.

I hear there was a truck of bees in town this morning that dropped two dozen hives. Dead bees scattered across the road at an hour when the sun’s still yawning. Honey poured across the pavement. A firetruck came and washed away the wreckage. It made the local morning news.

Fortune winks in the form of a trail at the end of this suburb street. It is paved, and long, and runs under a highway of huge and crackling electrical lines. It's funny how city planners entwine our nature refuges with these functionalities of urban life. Water treatment plants often have sweet secret-garden lagoons. I grew up knowing nature from the patches of trees on the golf course. The wild geese would pass through in the winter.

Winter in California is a curious time for those who grew up with more obvious seasons. I remember my first season in San Francisco, so confused by the blooming of the ice plants (invasive) along the coast in January, and how wine country grape leaves are the only taste of fall. In time, one learns to feel seasons by the angles of light.

Yesterday was groundhog day. Who knows what that means around here. I wear a sweater and vest My hands are chilly, yet I enjoy the feel of their swing at my sides and the freedom to not use my pockets. I walk along the high wire trail a bit, quickly maddened by the anxious and loud buzz above. This might kill me after a while, too. But not in one day’s explorations.

To the right is a huge orchard. I walk under the wires until the fence gives up it’s foreboding height, and invites me in with a low barrier moment. There’s a well-placed log on one side for stepping, a rock on the other. I don’t even have to leap, just step over. Clearly I am not the first person in this town to seek the orchard’s refuge.

The inner gate opens. The buzz drops away. The supple sand and grass under foot coax my body to slow down and soften. Tiny joyous birds hop about from branch to branch — they seem to chirp their gratitude. I wonder what excites them so in these fruitless trees? There must be bugs to enjoy.

At first I assume they are almond. I know the bee-keepers are here to pollinate almond trees. It’s that sort of time. But these trees are still in pre-sentience of bloom. Tiny tight white buds just barely peek from the ends of madrone-colored branches. It's the earliest preview of spring.

A few trees have been replaced with tiny fledglings. The corpses of their predecessors lay reposed upon the ground. They are beautiful. I pick up a small branch, and begin to wonder: cherry? It reminds me of the sort of blossom-filled branch one might buy as bouquet for a tasteful friend.

I move toward what feels like the center of the field, surrounded now by the orchard sea. All alone and supported by nature's rythyms, I pause, breathe, settle, dissolve. Instinctively movement unfolds — spine waves, belly opens, arms dance, all following an unspoken something. Feet sink light into earth like a lover. Listening. Sensing. Play.

A check of the watch.

It is time to unwind this spiral.

I bow to the orchard — just a thing I do sometimes to say thank you to land. I slowly walk out, arms swaying on settled hinges of shoulder, feet kissing ground with each step.

At the edge of the orchard the buzz of high voltage returns. A strange greeting. I imagine a cloak around my whole body — an egg inside which I might stay in the heart of the orchard while I walk back to town.

For as long as I can, I walk in the dirt alongside the paved trail. It is soft and inviting and spongy. Sometimes I think the single most powerful thing we could do to bring more softness into this world would be to uproot all the pavement. What if we walked on the earth all the time? Or even that spongy-springy substance they use these days on playgrounds. How would that change our relationship with ourselves? We couldn’t help but learn through new feet, nerves, and bones that responsive relating is possible.

Some say gravity is at it’s depth about eros, this ongoing attraction between body and earth. Pavement turns all that to porn. Senseless and numbing pounding.

Eventually I step back on the concrete trail, staying soft as I can with its hardness. I turn right and re-enter the neighborhood, where a white bunny chews in a yard, and a cat darts and hides in the bushes. Pets — half wild, half captive, like the manicured lawns. A mama with curlers in her hair tells her toddler not to walk in the yard. She doesn’t want his feet to get wet. We tame our own kind, too.

I cross the main drag and walk down it's sidewalk. Three trucks rumble by. Each one rattles my soul to its core. I remember the value of numb as I notice my hands reach for shelter.

At the edge of the strip malls, some land is for sale. 1.43 acres. Tiny yellow flowers bloom wild in this ‘unused’ patch. They are free while the land is unsold.

I turn through a parking lot toward the hotel, taking in a last taste of hazy sky. In a cloud of sadness I return to the first and last gate, and pull out my plastic key card. With one simple swipe, she gives me the green light to come in.

The air stinks again back in room 103, but I still can’t quite pinpoint the cause.

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